Googe Wave Overview

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What Is Google Wave?

Google Wave is one of the most hyped but least understood services Google has ever launched. Part of the problem is that – while it’s about collaboration and real-time communication – it has no direct parallel to existing products. As such, it’s hard to explain Wave to anyone who hasn’t used it. But let me try.

Google Wave is designed as a new Internet communications platform. It is written in Java using OpenJDK and its web interface uses the Google Web Toolkit. Google Wave works like previous messaging systems such as email and Usenet, but instead of sending a message along with its entire thread of previous messages, or requiring all responses to be stored in each user’s inbox for context, message documents (referred to as waves) that contain complete threads of multimedia messages (blips) are perpetually stored on a central server. Waves are shared with collaborators who can be added or removed from the wave at any point during a wave’s existence.

Google describes Wave as “what e-mail would look like if it were invented today” in the world of instant messaging, wikis, and online forums. But while the initial idea may have been to reinvent e-mail, in practice Wave is more akin to Google Docs than it is to Gmail.

While Wave incorporates features found in e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and online forums, it isn’t a direct replacement for any of those tools – especially not for e-mail. While it can be an excellent tool for co-writing and discussing text, it lacks many basic features you’d find in, say, Google Docs, such as saving the document in Microsoft Word or PDF format.

When you sign into Wave for the first time, you’ll notice it looks much like your e-mail client: there’s an Inbox, folders, and Contacts. Unread waves are at the top of your Inbox in bold, and you can click on a wave to view its contents, reply or edit it.

Google Wave represents an exciting new model for real-time, online collaboration with lots of potential.

Google Wave Video Overview

Google plans to release most of the source code as open source software, allowing the public to develop its features through extensions. Google will also allow third-parties to build their own Wave services as quickly as possible (be it private or commercial) because it wants the Wave protocol to replace the e-mail protocol. Initially, Google will be the only Wave service provider, but it is hoped that, as the protocol becomes standardized and the prototype server becomes stable, other service providers will launch their own Wave services, possibly designing their own unique web-based clients as is common with many email service providers. The possibility also exists for native Wave clients to be made, as demonstrated by Google with their CLI-based console client.

During the initial launch of Google Wave, invitations were a hot commodity, even being sold on eBay. However, as more and more users began to use the product, there was a sense of confusion as to how to use it. Google Wave has been called an “overhyped disappointment” with “dismal usability” that “humans may not be able to comprehend“.

Google Wave provides federation using an extension of XMPP, the open Wave Federation Protocol. Being an open protocol, anyone can use it to build a custom Wave system and become a wave provider. The use of an open protocol is intended to parallel the openness and ease of adoption of the e-mail protocol and, like e-mail, allow communication regardless of provider. Google hopes that waves may replace e-mail as the dominant form of Internet communication. In this way, Google intends to be only one of many wave providers. It can also be used as a supplement to e-mail, instant messaging, FTP, etc.

The name was inspired by the Firefly television series in which a wave is an electronic communication (often consisting of a video call or video message). During the developer preview, a number of references were made to the series such as Lars Rasmussen replying to a message with “shiny”, a word commonly used in the series to mean cool or good, and the crash message of Wave being a popular quotation from the series: “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” Another common error message, “Everything’s shiny, Cap’n. Not to fret!” is a quote from Kaylee Frye in the 2005 motion-picture Firefly spin-off, Serenity, and it is matched with a sign declaring that This wave is experiencing some turbulence and might explode.

Related tag:
real-time communication, Google Wave, new Internet communications platform, Google Web Toolkit, messaging systems, multimedia messages, e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and online forums, real-time, online collaboration, Wave Federation Protocol, This wave is experiencing some turbulence and might explode.